


Rush Down Darkness

by Starlingthefool



Category: House MD
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Apocalypse, Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:56:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlingthefool/pseuds/Starlingthefool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"End of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine."</i><br/>House MD/World War Z crossover</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rush Down Darkness (1/3)

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic author: starlingthefool](http://community.livejournal.com/house_wilson/tag/fic%20author:%20starlingthefool), [fic genre: alternative universe](http://community.livejournal.com/house_wilson/tag/fic%20genre:%20alternative%20universe), [fic genre: crack](http://community.livejournal.com/house_wilson/tag/fic%20genre:%20crack), [fic genre: crossover](http://community.livejournal.com/house_wilson/tag/fic%20genre:%20crossover), [fic rating: r](http://community.livejournal.com/house_wilson/tag/fic%20rating:%20r), [fic warning: zombies](http://community.livejournal.com/house_wilson/tag/fic%20warning:%20zombies)  
  
---|---  
  
_**Is everyone still sick of zombies? Yes? Oops.**_  
**Title:** Rush Down Darkness (1/3)  
**Author:** [](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/profile)[**starlingthefool**](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/)  
**Pairing:** House/Wilson  
**Genre:** House MD/World War Z crossover  
**Rating:** R  
**Warning:** Zombies. End of the world, sort of. Spoilers for the book.  
**Summary:**_"End of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine."_  
**Disclaimer:** I own neither House nor the vast swarms of the undead from Max Brooks' world. Pity.  
**A/N:**For an in depth plot synopsis of _World War Z_ by Max Brooks, who also wrote _The Zombie Survival Guide_, you can look at [Wikipedia's article on it](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z#Major_epochs_of_World_War_Z).  
Or, if you're impatient, you can just read  my own plot synopsis:

Zombies began appearing in China, and the infection quickly spread through refugees fleeing the country. At first, China managed to cover up outbreaks. The first publicized zombie attacks were in South Africa, and the disease became known as African Rabies. In America, somebody successfully marketed a drug called Phalanx, which was supposed to be a vaccine and was, in fact, crap. Zombies showed up in America, first in isolated incidents, and eventually in swarms. The army made a very publicized last stand in Yonkers, New York, and got massacred. What was later called "The Great Panic" set in. The army retreated over the Rocky Mountains, keeping them as a natural barrier between them and a slight majority of the undead. It effectively created a self-contained quarantine in its own country, following the examples of other nations; take the government and a section of the population to a remote and hard to reach place, and quarantine yourself there. Meanwhile, a large amount of Americans east of the Rockies went north, because zombies eventually freeze when the temperature drops below freezing. Bad stuff happened to a lot of those people. Ever hear of the Donner Party? Yeah. That kind of bad stuff. Also, there was a short nuclear exchange between Iran and Pakistan, and the climate has shifted since the war ended.  
Also, the book is structured as a series of interviews. Hence...

  
** _Montpelier, Vermont._ **

_ **The house is small, dwarfed by large sugar maples on all sides. The color on the leaves is tinted yellow. Fall comes earlier to New England now.  
Dr. Gregory House is one of three doctors working in Montpelier and the surrounding towns. During the War, he lived in Princeton, New Jersey, part of the community that occupied Princeton University during the war and subsequent dark years. We talk on his front porch, which faces the Green Mountains and Winooski river.** _

I'd like to think I was better informed than most people on what everyone was calling African Rabies. It was interesting. I read everything I could find on it, which was practically nil, but I still found some stuff. A disease that drove people crazy and then made them eat each other? That's pretty damn cool. At least from an infectious disease point of view.

** _[His enthusiasm still shows through, though there's a measure of irony in his statement.]_ **

Anyway, not many of my colleagues knew much about it until Phalanx came out. And then they only knew what was on the pamphlets the pharmaceutical company gave them. If they did any other research on the disease, they might have learned a few things of interest. Oh, like, perhaps… the disease wasn't actually a form of rabies at all? Or even if it was, that this was a vaccine for an entirely different strain of it? Ten minutes on Google, that's all it would have taken, but those idiots… They sure as hell didn't tell the patients, anyway. Most of them just wrote the scrip and got their money.

Doctors are assholes who pander to their moron patients, the drug companies, and whoever is signing their paycheck.

_-All of them?_

Don't be an idiot. There's always that point zero zero zero one percent who are actually trying to do good work. Or who are at least more interested in actually curing a patient than in all the bullshit. That's me. I've only met about… seven doctors in my lifetime who are in the former group. If that.

_ **[He frowns, and shakes his head.]** _

It doesn't matter. I reserve most of my hatred for the old government, the CDC in particular, with a little left over for the asshole that actually marketed Phalanx.

Anyway. What the hell was I talking about?

Nothing really happens in New Jersey. Nothing epic, I mean. Even the nickname is boring. The Garden State. Aside from being a joke, it gives off that sense of stability and order. Everything is as it should be. A garden is nature with the illusion of control.

I'm stopping before that metaphor gets any deeper. The point is, you don't really expect anything big to happen in Jersey. Shit hits the fan north or south of us, New York or DC. I wasn't expecting the plague to come to us. If I wanted to see it, and I still did at that point, I figured I'd have to search it out.

Stupid of me. Stupid of everyone, but I should have known better.

The first cases I saw were before the Panic hit, by about two months. At that point, there were only rumors and misinformation about the virus. Nobody really knew what they were dealing with when it really hit. We had some of the first confirmed outbreaks here. Lucky us.

A kid, maybe fourteen, had been attacked while walking back home from a movie. He'd been with some friends who'd tried to help him, but they got bitten in the process, then ran away. Left their friend to die, but you can't really blame them. And shit, looked what happened to them.

From their accounts, there was only one zombie. It was probably an illegal refugee. Got bit, came to America hoping that the bullshit about Phalanx was true. They weren't flooding into here like they were in Western Europe or Southeast Asia, but there were enough of them. You only need one, anyway, and two days later, there'll be an army of ghouls shambling down the street.

If we'd known more about the disease, if the fucking government or CDC had actually decided to share with us doctors what we should have been looking for, what to do in case of an outbreak, than maybe it could have been contained. Maybe not everywhere, but we would have known enough to…

_ **[He trails off angrily. He says nothing for a while, just watches the leaves move in the trees.]** _

Fourteen people, staff and patients, were infected before we knew what was happening. Thirty-nine before we could get them all quarantined. That's not even counting those who were killed outright and then reanimated later in the morgue. Thank fuck we had enough body bags on hand.

Despite that, the whole fucking mess was contained enough to be deemed "an isolated incident." Level One. Minor mishap. Fuckers. I hope every last one of those bastards at the CDC got his brains eaten. Don't give me that fucking look. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of bureaucrats.

_-Did you know any of the people who died that day?_

Another stupid question. Of course I did. It was a big hospital, but it was still the same people everyday. Do you mean did I know them well? Play golf with them? Watch the Superbowl while sharing beer and nachos with them? Were any of them my friends? No. They were people I worked with. I didn't have many friends at that point, and I have less now.

_-What did you do during the Great Panic?_

Hah. That's how you know something's officially become history: it's prefaced with an adjective and given capital letters.

Our hospital had been closed, because of that whole "isolated incident." Once we were out of quarantine, everyone scattered within the week. A few people got jobs elsewhere in town, at Princeton General or through the National Guard, who had troops stationed here because of the student riots. My boss actually went to Israel, got in just before the voluntary quarantine took effect and the borders closed. I found out last year that she survived. Good for her. I know a few who headed north, because the dead couldn't move when their limbs were frozen. Of course, neither can the living. Haven't heard anything from that group. They might have survived though.

I mostly drank. And took pills. End of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine. Or at least numb, which in my book was just as good. I watched a lot old TV episodes on DVD that week, because I could only stand so much of the news. After I watched the army get wiped out by the dead at Yonkers, I knew, just knew in my guts, that it was finished. Nobody was going to survive this. And then the announcement came that the army and government were retreating west of the Rockies. I drank the last of my Scotch, and decided that suicide sounded like a grand plan.

Wilson though, that bastard. He probably knew what I'd do. And he's got the sense of timing of a, a soap opera character.

He basically broke my door down and hauled my ass off the couch. He wanted me to come with him. Actually, demanded is a better word, but I didn't give him a chance to say where we might go. I fought him. We were all going to die, I said. Why not do it my way?

And he sat down, stared at me for a minute, then rolled up his sleeve. He knew I had morphine in the apartment, for-

_ **[He gestures to his leg.]** _

When the pain got really bad. He said to get it out. He'd inject me, said I was too drunk to know my ass from my elbow, which was probably true. I'd probably inject an air bubble, and those aren't always fatal. He'd make sure it did the trick, then he'd follow me. His actual words. "I'll follow you." I felt like a real bastard, but what other option was there for me? I couldn't make it up north, not with the gas shortage, and it's not like walking was an option. And besides, the world was fucked as far as I could tell. Why not check out early?

So I got the morphine out, let him fill up the syringe, rolled up my sleeve, and thanked him before he injected me.

I actually fucking thanked the bastard. I should have known. Everybody lies, some more than most. Wilson better than most.

Hah. The funny thing is, he probably got the idea from me.

_ **[He smiles nostalgically again, then catches my curious look.]** _

If you think you're going to hear that story, piss off.

Anyway, when I woke up, he had moved us from my apartment to the Graduate dorms at Princeton University.

_-The dorms? Why not the hospital?_

It was too new. Too many windows and glass walls. Some of the floors would have been safe, but the others… The University though. Some of those buildings are over two hundred years old. Lots of stone work, narrow windows, towers. The Grad buildings even had a walled in courtyard. Closest thing to a castle we could have had. It was a good idea. Not that I really appreciated it at the time.

_**[He laughs.]**_

He's lucky I was too dizzy to get up, or I would have kicked the shit out of him. I did punch him the next morning. Knocked one of his teeth out, and all that blood pouring out of his mouth… That stopped me. Long enough for him to get in a few words.

He said, "You want to kill yourself, fine. The morphine's in the third drawer in my desk. Fucking hell, House. I didn't think you'd just quit like this. I thought you'd fight."

I laughed in his face, even though I saw how disappointed he was, and it twisted my guts until I remembered that he knew how to push my buttons. "There's nothing left to fight for."

"Just our lives," he said. And… fuck.

_ **[He shakes his head.]** _

That moron had been fighting for me for years, way before this shit hit the fan. Pretty much everyone else at the hospital had left Princeton. He was the only one who stayed, and it was for me. He could have gone north with the rest of them. Hell, he's Jewish, he could have gone to Israel. But he stayed because he knew I had to. Knew I wouldn't leave.

I couldn't fathom it then. I just figured I owed it to him to start fighting for myself.

** _[He watches the trees in silence a while.]_ **

This seems like a great afternoon for getting drunk. Want a beer?

** _[He doesn't wait for an answer before hauling himself out of his chair and going into the kitchen. He comes back with a small box of unlabeled brown bottles and sets it down at his feet.]_ **

I miss whiskey. There's a couple of families in town who do home brewing, but nobody's set up a distiller yet. And the trade lines are still shaky here.

_ **[He gives me a bottle, then opens one for himself.]]** _

_-Cheers._

A toast: here's to the world not ending. May I never live to see another goddam apocalypse.

_Continues [here](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/51463.html)._


	2. Rush Down Darkness (2/3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In situations like this, the needs of the community are more important than the needs of the individual.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fanfiction](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/tag/fanfiction), [rush down darkness](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/tag/rush%20down%20darkness), [zombies](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/tag/zombies)  
  
---|---  
  
**Title:**Rush Down Darkness (2/3)  
**Genre:** House MD/_World War Z_ crossover  
**Pairing:** House/Wilson  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own the characters or the situation. I'm just a big dork.  
**Summary:** In situations like this, the needs of the community are more important than the needs of the individual.

[Part 1](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/49249.html)

_ **Montpelier, Vermont.   
When I come in, Dr. House is in the kitchen, making a sandwich. He sits at the kitchen counter and talks to me between bites.** _

What nobody talks about is how boring survival is. The first few weeks are busy busy busy: everyone is running around, bricking up windows, collecting weapons and food, treating the wounded. Then everything slows down, and time starts crawling. For most of us, survival was just a lot of sitting around, waiting for the worst to happen. For the generators to break, or the food to run out, or the zombies to get inside.

And inevitably, that boredom leads to trouble. Hell, I'd say boredom was the leading cause of death for most of the people that died in Princeton, that first year. Though if they'd gotten death certificates, they would have said things like suicide, or blunt head trauma.

_-Would you care to explain that second one a little?_

Not really. What's there to explain? You take a random bunch of people from different backgrounds, from blue blood Young Republicans to old men who marched against Vietnam to the Latina women who vacuumed both of their floors for a living, all of them suffering PTSD, and stick them indefinitely in one building together, and give them nothing to do besides survive. There were about six hundred people occupying various parts of the university that first year. There was just under four-seventy the next. A few people left or were forcibly expelled, but most of that number were casualties. In my professional medical opinion, boredom accounted for half of those deaths. Stupidity took care of the rest.

_-What was it like in Grads that first year?_

Dozens of fistfights, more than a few rapes, some stabbings. There were more doctors in Grads, though, so fewer people dying of injuries. Still, there was only so much we could do.

Also, there were the ADS* cases and suicides. We had a higher number of those in Grads than in the other buildings. An anomaly. Someone should do a study.

_-About that…_

You want to know if I ever tried it again?

_-If you're comfortable talking about it-_

_ **[He waves off my comment, then finishes off the last of his sandwich before he speaks again.]** _

I never made him any promises. He never tried to force one from me. He knew what our odds were, especially that first year.

_-What were they?_

Dismal. Like the rest of the world. Especially that first six months, before Radio Free Earth came on air, and all we heard were a few spotty reports from over the Rockies, and then a whole lot of other people like us. The stranded. You knew that any day, your defenses might fail, or there'd be a swarm that would just overwhelm them. And if the ghouls didn't get you, your food supplies might run out, or there could be a fire, or you could cut yourself and get septicemia. You could hear it happening to other people, as they screamed it out over the airwaves.

And then there was the living situation. We didn't leave that building for four and a half months. Four and a half months of the same faces, every day. The same petty bullshit, the same conversations, the same gossip. Same stale air, unless you wanted to go out into the courtyards, which were always crowded.

Add chronic pain and a dwindling supply of drugs to all of that…

** _[He laughs.]_ **

I heard there was a betting pool on when I'd go, and how many people I'd take with me. Hey, people had to find some way of amusing themselves.

So Wilson didn't try and get a promise from me. That made it easier, knowing I could check out whenever I wanted, guilt-free. For the most part. Instead, he just… watched me. Carefully, that whole first year. He was the busiest person in Grads. It was him and a few other people, of which I was definitely _not_ part, who were trying to take care of everyone, all the time, all these stupid assholes who'd been spoon-fed their whole lives.

He saw me everyday, long enough to make sure I was eating, and to kick back for a couple of minutes and trade a few dirty jokes and some of the more mundane gossip. He'd leave me a book, or a magazine from before the war, or some chocolate he'd traded somebody for. He… took care of me. Like he'd always done. I tried to do the same for him, because nobody can overwork themselves like James Wilson, but he had more practice.

** _[He pauses, and then smiles.]_ **

We'd been there for about a month when he brought me to this room in the basement. He made it into this big surprise, made me cover my eyes before he'd open the door.

Turns out, it was a music room. Two pianos in it, along with a ton of other instruments, with enough soundproofing on the walls to make sure nobody in the next room over would hear, never mind the dead outside.

Thank fuck for that. That room is what got me through the autumn. And the rest of our time there.

_-How else did people get through the months?_

There were a lot of card games. Some of the doctors started taking on medical students as apprentices, sort of. Others taught classes. Wilson bribed me into giving piano lessons to anyone who wanted them and wasn't a complete idiot.

** _[He shrugs.]_ **

Everyone got claustrophobic. Winter couldn't have come soon enough. It was the light at the end of a zombie-infested tunnel.

Winter meant you could go outside. You could move. You could breathe again. Suddenly, people who'd been unable to stand the sight of each other would team up and have snowball fights. Wilson and I had an all-out war. I won, by the way. Make sure to include that in your interview: Dr. House won the epic snowball battle, despite persistent rumors to the contrary.

Of course, we had hypothermia and frostbite to deal with, and the flu and strep throat and pneumonia and people with lung conditions from all the shit in the air, and all kinds of other dumb shit besides. Not to mention how fucking cold it was all the time until we got enough fuel for the generators. But still, it was like a party instead of a battle for the first time in months, especially those first few weeks after the snowfall.

Hell, you could smash in the skulls of all the frozen zombies that had set up camp outside the buildings. Great stress relief, let me tell you. Let go of some pent up rage.

And we could replenish the supplies. I made damn sure I had enough whiskey to get me through the next year.

_-Is it true that you had the idea of spreading out all the skilled students and workers?_

_ **[He nods.]** _

It was an obvious idea, but hey, flattery gets you everywhere.

Before, everyone was clustered. There were a lot of doctors and med students in Grads, but no engineers. Plenty of environmental studies nerds in Chancellor Green, but nobody who knew how to operate a ham radio. All the campus security and ROTC kids, who were pretty much the only ones who'd ever used guns, were on opposite ends of the campus, with all the privileged brats and white-collar professionals in between.

A lot of people moved out of the building, and a lot of new people moved in. Wilson stayed, so I did too. He became the unofficial head of Grads. Wilson was the good guy, organized everything in that building and still had time to treat your boo-boos. I became the unofficial boogeyman, which suited me fine. Kind of like Phantom of the Opera, only I couldn't find a cool mask. Or maybe Batman…

_-Can you tell me more about your role in the Grads building, Dr. House?_

_ **[He glares at me.]** _

You know it's all a matter of public record now, right? I gave my statements to those Civilian Inquiry morons** and they cleared me of all charges. Eventually.

_-I've read the records, and your statements. I'd like to hear what you have to say about it now, when you're not facing jail time or the suspension of your license._

Are you insinuating I lied under oath? I hear they still practice flogging with those charged with slander, you know.

_-No they don't. And I'm not insinuating anything, only that I'd like to hear what you have to say about your role in the community of the Grads building._

** _[He continues to glare for a moment, then, surprisingly, breaks out in a smile.]_ **

You're good. I'll give you that. I hear you interviewed the former defense secretary, and actually got him to tell you to fuck off.*** Not everyone gets told off by former White House staff. Good one.

-_Actually-_

I did the dirty work. That's what you want to know about, right? Not the "put your nose to the ax grinder" dirty work, I didn't shovel shit or wash dishes. My leg excused me from a lot of grunt labor. I did the kind of dirty work that nobody really wants to hear about until they need somebody to blame. But still, it needed to be done, and I was the logical choice. I'm an amoral, unrepentant bastard with an ability to do the kind of simple math that makes everyone uncomfortable. That's a quote, by the way. I'm not the first one to say it.****

Ask any battlefield surgeon. Sometimes, to save a life you have to take off a limb. It's callous, it's cruel. Problem is, it was necessary.

The first one was a serial rapist. I don't know if he'd been one before the war, or if it was the shock and trauma manifesting as sexual predation. At the time, I didn't give a fuck. All I knew is that he'd raped three women in the building and threatened to kill them if they told anyone. I found out about it when one of his victims asked me to perform an abortion on her. And you have to realize how desperate she must have been to come to _me._

That saying, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going?" That's the biggest load of horseshit. A few people rise to the occasion, a lot more hide beneath their beds, and then a few of them totally lose it. That's pretty much the anthem of the whole war, isn't it?

_-Dr. Wilson, did he approve of your actions?_

_ **[Instead of answering, he takes up his cane and walks out the backdoor. I follow him; he's lit a cigarette and smokes it while looking out over the backyard. The sun is setting over the mountains.]** _

People think it was like a mafia movie, or like I was some kind of hired gun, the KGB of Grads. They imagine Wilson and I sitting on a bench in the courtyard, I don't know, feeding ducks and speaking in some kind of cryptic code. _[He affects a Russian accent.]_ "I hear you're having trouble with so-and-so on the third floor. You want I should take care of him?"

It's a fucking joke. For one thing, we'd already eaten any kind of bird that was still stupid enough to be caught in a net, and the courtyards were the most crowded places in the buildings. Not a good place to conspire to kill someone.

And for another, we never talked about it, not like that. I didn't take orders from him, or anybody else running things. I wasn't a hired hitman. Wilson and the rest of the people in charge kept things running. I stepped in when something broke down.

_ **[He smokes for a minute, visibly trying to calm himself.]** _

I wouldn't have told him. I didn't want him to know. He had enough crap on his mind, and I wasn't proud of what I'd done. Of course, he figured it out anyway.

He didn't condone it at first. Actually, that's a massive understatement. When he put the pieces together, he nearly hit me. He didn't talk to me for close to a week. And it was all over a fucking rapist, though I was the only one who ever called him that. He'd assaulted _three_ women, and they were only the ones that I knew about. Who knows how many others there were?

Simple math, like I'd said before. You fuck over one person to keep the rest of them safe. But it's hard to tell that to someone with a Superman complex.

Wilson understood, eventually. "The needs of the community are more important than the needs of the individual." His own words, coming back to bite him in the ass. When he'd said it, it had been excuse for him running himself almost to exhaustion. When I said it, it was to explain why I'd just forced a serial rapist to leave the campus at gunpoint at three in the morning. It was as good as a death sentence, but still better than that asshole deserved.

_-There were others?_

_ **[He nods.]** _

_ _-How many over the years?_ _

**[He takes a drag of his cigarette, lets the smoke out slowly.]**

Not many. More than anyone wanted there to be, though.

Wilson hated it, but he was smart. He knew what the stakes were. And I didn't go off half-cocked. I wasn't an idiot about it, I wasn't some blood-crazed killer all fucked up from drugs and psychological trauma, and he knew that. He watched me. If he'd seen the slightest sign that I was about to become a gun-toting vigilante… he would have stopped me.

_-Did you ever talk about it?_

No. Not like that. There was one time… This is off record. Get that? I see this in print and I sue your ass into the ground. Not for me, but for _him._

_-Dr. Wilson was cleared as well-_

Off. The fucking. Record. Got it?

_-Yes, all right._

_ **[He takes a deep breath.]** _

I had nightmares. Well, shit, so did everyone, but mine weren't just about zombies. They were about… the things I did. In Grads. They didn't all go quietly as the first. And there were a couple of times when it got bad. Messy.

Wilson and I shared a room. Shit, since this is off the record, I might as well tell you that sometimes we shared a bed, too. If you crack a joke, I'll break your jaw.

_-I wasn't. And I'm not going to out you._

I don't even know why I'm telling you this, it has fuck-all to do with anything-

_-Please continue. If you're willing, I'd like to hear it._

All right. I don't know if Batman ever got nightmares, but I had some hellish ones. And one time, this was the second year in… or maybe the third. I don't know anymore. Anyway, I must have woken him. And he shook me awake, and… _[He shifts, uncomfortable.] _ Waking up was always bad. I'd get the shakes. He held me through them that night, until I finally stopped. Then he told me he was sorry. About what I had to do. About the responsibility I'd taken up. He said he trusted me. More than anyone in that building, he trusted me.

_ **[He takes a final drag from the cigarette, then drops it into an empty mug on the porch.]** _

That's enough. You should leave.

_-Actually, I had a few more questions-_

Come back tomorrow. Actually, come back next week. Let an old man get his beauty rest.

 

_*ADS: Asymptomatic Demise Syndrome. Alternately known as Apocalyptic Despair Syndrome._

_**Post-War Civilian Inquiry Court: a special national court convened after the war, in order to investigate claims of treason, murder, conspiracy, and other felonious charges brought against civilians in the Blue Zones._

_***See interview with Grover Carlson, former defense secretary of the pre-war government. His actual words were, "Grow up."_

_****This is unverified._


	3. Rush Down Darkness (3/3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I don't know exactly when I realized that there were more walking corpses than living people"_

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fanfiction](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/tag/fanfiction), [rush down darkness](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/tag/rush%20down%20darkness), [zombies](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/tag/zombies)  
  
---|---  
  
**Title:** Rush Down Darkness (3/3)  
**Author:** [](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/profile)[**starlingthefool**](http://starlingthefool.livejournal.com/)  
**Pairing:** House/Wilson (mostly gen)  
**Genre:** House MD/World War Z crossover  
**Rating:** R  
**Warning:** Zombies. Angst. Violence. House with a loaded gun. Not quite apocalyptic, but close.  
**Summary:**_ "I don't know exactly when I realized that there were more walking corpses than living people"_  
**Disclaimer:** I own neither House nor the vast swarms of the undead from Max Brooks' world. Pity.  
**A/N:** If anybody is interested, here is an [aerial photo](http://www.princeton.edu/~gradcol/album/gcair.htm) of the Old Graduate College of Princeton University, where this all takes place.

  
**Montpelier, Vermont.  
Dr. House waves me inside impatiently and sits down in an easy chair in the living room. I show him the article I read on the train from Boston – Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital has just reopened its doors. He glances through it disinterestedly, smirking once when he reads that Lisa Cuddy declined her old position, choosing instead to stay in Israel, but has agreed to act as a consultant.**

For a steep price, from what she told me the last time we talked.

_\- Have you been back to Princeton since you left?_

** _[He snorts and puts down the paper.]_ **

They invited me to the grand opening of the memorial garden at the University. I didn't go then, wouldn't be caught dead at something like that. Pun totally intended. But I've visited it since then. One of the kids that lived in Chancellor Green designed it. You can tell, because every plant in there is edible. Even the roses can be made into wine. And were; though with varying degrees of success.

Did you bring the whiskey this time?

_ **[I nod, and pull the bottle of Glenlivet from my backpack. He snatches it out of my hands and stomps into the kitchen, pouring two glasses. He sniffs gingerly at the drink, raises his glass to me, and then swallows it down.]** _

Ah. _Ah._ I've missed that.

** _[He hands one glass to me and pours himself another.]_ **

Let me guess: you want to know about when Grads was overrun.

_\- The week of September 15, 20-_

_ **[He waves me off, bringing the bottle and his glass back into the living room..]** _

Dates don't matter. They did for a while, but eventually we all got tired of carving hatch marks on the wall. All anyone knew or cared about was that another winter passed, another summer, another short autumn. Nobody cares about what month it is when tomorrow, you might be dead. Or worse.

Then we heard the government's grand plan: take America back from the ghouls. Scour the zombie menace from the Earth.

** _[He makes a face.] _ **

How patriotic. I almost vomited when they played the national anthem at the end of the broadcast. But all of a sudden, there was a reason to start counting the days again.

Waiting is better and worse than just surviving. Time started crawling even slower than it had before, because now we knew that we just had to hold on. But if we'd known it would take so long… Three years? The assholes couldn't go any faster than that? Was the army was made of old women in walkers?

Still, it was a good thing to get that announcement. Everyone calmed down, started watching themselves again, remembering that we weren't supposed to be a bunch of savage monkeys. The violence dropped back, and the suicides and ADS episodes pretty much stopped. People were too busy discussing the… I hesitate to call it progress. Anyway we were all glued to the radios, listening as the army crawled incrementally closer.

With all the waiting and hoping and suddenly remembering we were supposed to be civilized human beings to each other, we let our guard down. We knew better than to expect we wouldn't encounter any ghouls before the army got to Princeton; we weren't quite that stupid. But we didn't expect the swarm, though we should have realized about the ripple effect – that when one zombie sees a potential meal and moans, another hears it, answers it, and starts making for the source of the sound. Meanwhile, a mile away, another zombie hears the second, and answers it… and so on.

When the army started coming north from DC, a lot of ghouls headed south to meet them. We were caught in the slow, shambling crossfire. The call came on the radio; the sentries on the roof of Fine Hall had spotted the swarm moving towards us.

We'd been attacked before. The worst was when McCarter Theater was overrun – fifty people were killed, and they'd been attacked by swarm of a hundred ghouls. This swarm we were facing was at least triple that.

After McCarter, all the heads of the buildings had gotten together and made some decisions. The next time it happened – this was long before the president's announcement, when we were all a lot smarter and more pessimistic – the next time we were facing a swarm, each building would stand for itself. Half the casualties of that first siege had been from other buildings, trying to help the people trapped in McCarter. So in the event of a siege, each building was solely responsible for its own defense. No rescue operations, no searching the rubble for survivors, nothing. Survivors would be responsible for saving their own asses. All the heads had agreed to it.

There were under four hundred people living on the campus by then, six years on. About a dozen were under fourteen, with a few younger children. A dozen more were over sixty. Twice as many were too sick to fight – we'd had another round of gastroenteritis run through the place a week before.

So… about three hundred and forty people who could fight, against more than three hundred zombies. The odds weren't pretty.

The swarm was coming from the north. We all hoped that they would disperse amongst the buildings, thin their numbers and give us all a chance to gain an upper hand. If that didn't happen, I personally was hoping they'd hit one of the buildings east of us, Forbes or the Halls. Grads is pretty removed from the rest of campus, there was a chance they might ignore us altogether.

Yeah, yeah, very selfish of me. So sorry for wishing a horde of zombies on somebody else. I'm sure the other buildings were nothing but sorry when the entire swarm swerved west and headed right for Grads.

We'd had a little time to prepare. Moved the sick people and kids, checked the ammunition supplies and emergency packs, set up the barricades and defenses. We'd all drilled, because drilling for emergencies cures boredom and makes you feel like you're actually doing something worthwhile. So it wasn't complete chaos.

We set up a lot of sharpshooters too – all of the older people, the older kids, anyone who wouldn't be as good for fighting face to face. Of course, Wilson shunted me off into that category. I remember wondering if I should have been pissed at him or not. He'd stuck me up in Cleveland Tower, which was the tallest point in the building, and gave me the best rifle that we'd gotten from the air drops. Maybe he knew I had the best eye and would do the most damage from there. Or maybe he just wanted me as far from the action as possible.

I remember the way he looked at me before I left to go up in the tower. I remember that he smiled; lips closed, because he was still self conscious about the tooth I'd knocked out during our first week there. I don't know if it was supposed to be reassuring, but it let me know how scared he was. I doubt that was his intention.

I left him then and made my way up to the tower, very slowly and with lots of breaks to catch my breath and curse Wilson for making me climb all these damned stairs.

The Tower was almost one of the safest places in Grads. Only one staircase up, and the final part, where I was, only accessible from a trap door in the ceiling in the room below, which was higher than a person could reach. We'd installed a bolt on it early in the war, so it was practically impenetrable.

But it was also a complete trap. Once the trap door was locked, there was nowhere else to go except out the window, so it wasn't quite ideal. That was why I was the only one up there.

When I got to the top and locked the trap door, I realized what Wilson had been thinking. I'd be more than safe up here. If things went south, I wouldn't be able to join the fray. I'd have to stay here until the fight really was over, one way or the other. This was confirmed when I opened my pack, which he had put together for me. There was enough food and water in there for close to a week.

Being in the tower also meant that I could see everything. I still don't know if he wanted that as well. Did he want me to be the witness? Did he envision some journalist kid coming here and wringing this story out of me?

_ **[Dr. House glares at me and pours himself another glass of whisky.]** _

I wouldn't put it past him, the devious bastard. Anyway, it didn't work out quite the way he planned.

The swarm rolled towards us slowly. A shambling wave of doom.

_ **[He chuckles without much humor.] ** _

That should be the byline of this interview. Or maybe that's what I'll title my memoir. Anyway…

For a while, it seemed like we would make it through. The sharpshooters kept the ghouls' numbers down, and only a few were getting past the defenses. People on the walls and the ground took care of them.

But there was the ripple effect; the ghouls just kept coming. They heard – or sense or whatever it is that they do – they heard the battle going on from miles away and made for the building. They started trickling in faster than we could shoot them down, more and more.

Zombies don't need to sleep or eat. They don't get tired enough to make stupid mistakes. They may be slow and dumber than a box of rocks, but they're relentless. They don't fucking _stop._

Human beings, on the other hand, are probably the worst weapons on the planet. If we were cars, we would have been recalled for inherent design flaws a long time ago. Force us to go without food, water, or sleep for too long and we break.

It happened slowly. We held them off steadily throughout that first night, but every hour they crept closer. A few more would get inside, and people wouldn't respond as fast.

I saw it all falling apart, safe in my goddam tower that Wilson had put me in, up close and personal because of the scope on the rifle. I saw it when the first ghouls got inside, the few isolated incidents. Then not so isolated incidents. Then they were trickling inside, and people were falling back to the upper floors, but not fast enough. Never fucking fast enough. I saw a sixteen year old girl, who had turned eleven in the University the first year of the war, get ambushed by a group of ghouls. I lined her up in my sights, put a bullet in her brain, trying not to remember her as an obnoxious kid who'd had a crush on Wilson when she was thirteen. Bang. Then I moved on to the ghouls mauling her. Bang bang bang. I think her name was Gina. Or Jenny, something like that.

I saw the fire break out – some idiot must have left a candle burning, I don't know how else it could have started. That's when we really started to lose it. The fire itself got contained quickly, it helped that it was raining, but it took manpower off the walls, and the smoke and steam made it almost impossible for the sharpshooters to get clear shots.

Before that, I'd been keeping track of Wilson. Not following him like his damn mother, just checking in on him. He'd stayed mostly in the same place – the walls on the second floor, north side of the building. He'd been assigned shooting duty too. He was almost as good a shot as me.

I lost him in the smoke. When it cleared, the walls where he'd been standing had been overrun.

I kept shooting. There wasn't anything else to do, though I briefly thought about turning the rifle on myself. I decided it'd be a shame to die with so many bullets left.

I don't know exactly when I realized that there were more walking corpses than living people in the Grads. Close to dawn. I think it was the third day after the swarm had first been sighted. I was still shooting, though I'd stopped to eat, even slept a little. Every time I sighted down the barrel, I wondered if it would be Wilson's face I'd see, empty of any sign of life except the distant hunger you'd see on the ghouls.

The rhythm of it took over after a while: sight, shoot, reload. I stopped thinking about anything else, stopped feeling anything, which was a fucking relief. I probably would have kept shooting until I ran out of bullets if I hadn't seen the shirt waving in the window of Pyne Tower out of the corner of my eye.

I swung the gun around, finger on the trigger. It was instinct by now. I almost pulled it before I realized what was in my sights. Wilson. Still alive. He looked as wasted as I felt, but he was still alive.

He had only his gun and a marker on him – who knows how he'd gotten it, or where. He wrote on the window, the letters shaky. I looked down the scope of my rifle.

_MARKER IN YOUR PACK._ I told you he'd packed my kit. Just goes to show the benefits of having an incredibly anal friend do your work.

I dug it out. _INJURED? BITTEN?_ I wrote, then sighted down the barrel to see his response.

_YES/NO._

_SERIOUS?_

_NOT YET._

Not yet? What the fuck did that mean? Apparently, Wilson's telepathy works over long distance, because he was writing again.

_FLESH WOUND BUT I'M STUCK HERE. INFECTION LIKELY._

_GET HERE. HAVE KIT._

_CAN'T. OUT OF AMMO._

Well shit, I thought to myself.

_STAY THERE,_ I wrote. _I'LL COME TO YOU._

I didn't look back to see his response, just moved to try and pack my stuff back up. Just then, all the physical sensations I'd been ignoring came back, and my leg felt like it was being stabbed with sharpened spoons. I hadn't had vicodin in two years by then, had made up for it with alcohol, codeine, handfuls of Tylenol, pot, whatever I could get. And the occasional shot of morphine, when Wilson could scare some up for me. It sucked, a lot, but I got through it. Mostly out of spite, Wilson said.

_ **[He glares at his right leg.]** _

But I hadn't had anything since the swarm had hit. It wouldn't even support my weight. I'd been sitting in the same position for too long. I wasn't going anywhere

I'd have to wait it out. I'd just slumped back against the wall when I realized I could hear my name being shouted from the other tower.

That FUCKing idiot. I jumped up, waving my arms to get him to shut up. His voice would bring every last ghoul in the place right to him, and his room wasn't quite the fortress that mine was.

He gestured at the window, and I picked up the scope.

_ NO! STAY THERE!!! _

_SHUT UP IDIOT,_ I wrote.

He looked at what I'd written, and even without the scope, I could see him roll his eyes.

_Z. EVERYWHERE. YOU WON'T MAKE IT HERE._ Then to make sure I got the point, he added, _DUMBASS._

Fuck that, I thought. But I knew better than to write it. I'd just wait until he passed out. I decided a change of topics was in order.

_SUPPLIES?_

Wilson shrugged. _SOME. ENOUGH. YOU?_

_GOOD FOR FEW DAYS. WHAT NOW?_

_WE WAIT IT OUT._ That was his answer.

Wait? For what? Nobody from the university would come, they'd all agreed. The army was still in Philadelphia. They wouldn't be getting to Princeton for another week. Maybe two. Maybe more.

I must have been broadcasting my doubt, because Wilson wrote some more.

_NOTHING ELSE TO DO._

It was true, unfortunately.

_WE COULD PLAY HANGMAN,_ I wrote.

He gave me a wan smile, then wrote, _TIRED. GOING TO SLEEP A BIT. SHOOT IN AIR THREE TIMES FOR SOS._

I nodded and capped my marker. Wilson disappeared from sight. I swallowed five Extra-strength Tylenol from the bottle Wilson had packed in my bag, then took a look around. There were still plenty of undead wandering around, or gnawing on the bodies. Mostly the latter.

I figured I had a chance to get over to Pyne tower, if my leg would cooperate. And my rifle didn't misfire. And a whole bunch of other "ifs" that were less than reassuring. I waited till the pain in my leg died down from excruciating to merely throbbing, then moved over to open the trapdoor.

I started to push it down, and almost fell through it when it was wrenched out of my grasp. A ghoul stared up at me, and there were close to a dozen behind it.

Good thing I was still holding my rifle.

I shot him, and luckily the blast knocked him off his feet, then I jerked the door back up into place and bolted it.

I was so screwed.

Zombies are like cows – they don't seem to mind going up stairs, especially if there's food, but they won't go down without some kind of impetus. Who knows why? The shot I fired would only bring more. No way could I shoot my way out of that room with a bolt-action rifle. For better or worse, I was stuck in the damn tower.

I won't bore you recounting the next two days that Wilson and I were there. We did end up playing a fair bit of Hangman. I shot zombies. Wilson pulled a Spiderman stunt to write "2 LEFT ALIVE" on the outside wall of the tower, which faced the rest of campus. It didn't bring anyone. Meanwhile, our supplies slowly ran out.

Eventually, the words I'd been hoping not to see appeared on Wilson's window.

_WATER ALMOST GONE._

_HOW MUCH?_

_LESS THAN 1/2 BOTTLE._

_MAYBE IT'LL RAIN._

He didn't answer, just looked pointedly up at the sky – it had been clear since the night of the fire, and the sun had evaporated any puddles. It was the first time in six years that the autumn rains hadn't arrived freakishly early.

_FOOD?_ I wrote.

He shook his head. I wondered how long it had been since he ran out, if he'd ever had any to begin with, and why the hell I hadn't noticed.

He wrote something else. _NOBODY'S COMING._

I really wanted to argue with that, but it was true.

_YOUR SUPPLIES? FOOD/WATER/BULLETS?_ He asked.

_OK ON ALL 3._ Though not for a lot longer, but no need to tell him that.

He nodded, then capped his marker. I watched as he paced around the room for a bit, limping heavily. The flesh wound he'd mentioned was on his leg, the pants dark with dried blood, though I'd seen him clean the wound. He stared out the window for a while, the one facing away from me, towards the quad littered corpses, both walking and still. Finally, he came back.

_WILL YOU DO THE HONORS?_

I wondered if he'd become delirious. _WTF YOU TALKING ABOUT? _

To answer, he pointed his index finger at his temple with his thumb at a right angle, like a gun, and mimed pulling the trigger.

_NO._ To be sure he got the point, I circled it, added a couple exclamation marks, and then stuck up my middle finger at him for good measure.

He didn't throw up his hands, but he rolled his eyes. _I HAVE NO WATER OR FOOD, LEG WILL BE SEPTIC SOON, AND THERE'S ZOMBIES POUNDING ON THE DOOR. I'M DEAD ANYWAY._ Then he drew an arrow and underlined his previous statement. _NOBODY'S COMING._

I narrowed my eyes. That bastard, the fucking _bastard_ to ask this of me. Especially in light of the last time we'd been in a similar situation, when it was him holding a needle instead of me holding a gun.

_YOU ASS. YOU ONLY WANT TO DIE BECAUSE YOU FAILED. EVERYONE UNDER YOUR CARE IS DEAD EXCEPT ME. FUCK YOU. SELFISH BASTARD, I'M NOT HELPING YOU GO DOWN WITH YOUR SHIP._

I was hoping to make him angry. You can live on anger when your hope is gone, I knew from personal experience.

He didn't rise to the bait, unfortunately. _YOU WANT ME TO DIE SLOWLY AND IN PAIN?_

_NO, IDIOT. I WANT YOU TO FIGHT. TIME TO RETURN THE FAVOR FROM 6 YEARS AGO._

He squeezed the base of his nose in frustration. The gesture was so familiar, I would have smiled. If, you know, my best friend hadn't just asked me to kill him.

_LOOK,_ he wrote, then pointed out the window to the quad and its collection of corpses.

_LOOK._ He underlined the word, then showed me the last of his water. It was actually closer to a quarter of a bottle.

He underlined it again, then unbuckled his pants and slid them down. He had a bullet graze on the outside of his left thigh. It was red, swollen. In the scope, I could see his cheeks were flushed with a fever, and the telltale red lines of blood poisoning.

_YOU'RE RIGHT. I FAILED. THERE'S NOTHING LEFT TO FIGHT FOR._

He waited for me to answer, but I didn't have one for him. He continued.

_SO EITHER YOU SHOOT ME, OR I JUMP OUT THE WINDOW. OR DIE OF THIRST AND SEPTIC SHOCK. YOUR CHOICE._

When I still didn't answer, he wrote, _HOUSE. PLEASE._

Eventually, I wrote, _YOU DO UNDERSTAND THE IRONY OF THIS, RIGHT?_

He smiled a little. _SORRY._ After a minute, he added, _FOR ALL OF IT._

I nodded. If he'd been expecting a similar apology from me, twelve years of friendship and six years of depending on each other for survival had been a complete waste.

_SUNSET,_ I wrote. I figured it would do two things; first, allow Wilson to see one more sunset before he died, which fit in nicely with that romantic streak he'd stubbornly held onto even through the end of the world. And second, it would give me time to work up whatever it took to kill your best friend.

I'm not a compassionate person. I had trouble thinking of it as putting him out of his misery, true as it might have been. And I'm a selfish old bastard. I didn't want to be left alone, and I didn't want to die, but there was no way I wanted to bother living when the only person who gave two shits about me was dead.

I started getting angry at him. For putting me in this position. For the trick with the morphine. For getting angry with my methods for dealing with rapists and the unstable psychos in Grads. For making _me_ take care of _him._ For heaping all this responsibility on me when all I'd wanted to do since this whole mess started was check out.

Like I said before, anger will see you through when most other things fail. Even if the anger is half a lie.

The sky got darker, and the sun started to sink into the west. I held onto that rage I'd conjured, because what else did I have? I glared across the distance between us, trying hard to make that anger into hatred.

He wrote one more thing on the window, then capped his marker and set it down in the window sill.

It said _THANK YOU._

Then he pushed the window up and, making a visible effort, stood straight on his two legs. Arms spread, eyes closed.

I brought the rifle up and put Wilson's forehead in my sights. Habit by then. At first, I was shaking too hard. The barrel was moving, the crosshairs wouldn't stay on his face Then I remembered him saying, _"I'll follow you,"_ way back when this had all started. The rage returned. The gun steadied. I sighted again, and slowly squeezed the trigger.

_ **[He pauses, tapping his cane on the floor in a steady rhythm. He drinks the rest of his scotch before he finally continues.]** _

It turns out that the people in the other buildings had been in radio contact with the army for days. After enough begging, some commander broke protocol and sent some troops ahead to aid us. They got there just before sunset that last day, and had come out to Grads to clean up the remaining ghouls and search for survivors.

The shouts from below startled me – the gun went off, but I'd jerked. It felt like I'd missed, but when I looked up from the scope, Wilson wasn't in the window, and there was a spray of blood on the stone.

_ **[He pauses again, lost in thought.]** _

I don't remember much about what happened right after. I somehow managed to get from my tower to Wilson's, despite the pain in my leg and the zombies that were still around. When I got there, a med team had already arrived; they'd seen his sign outside his window.

My bullet had hit the stone wall next to him; it ricocheted and then lodged in his rib. Chips of stone had grazed the skin of his face and neck, and he'd lost a lot of blood. Add that he was dehydrated, feverish, and in the beginning stages of septicemia, and it was doubtful that he'd survive.

But he did.

_ **[He sets the glass down on the coffee table in front of him, and catches my look.]** _

What? That's the end of the story. It's pretty damn cheery, if you ignore the 44 people in Grads who died. The two main protagonists lived happily ever-

_\- Dr. House, why are you no longer on speaking terms with Dr. Wilson?_

_ **[He glares at me.]** _

Who told you we aren't?

_\- He did._

Then I'm sure you have all of his theories to work with. Get out.

…I said _get out._

****

House watches the young reporter turn off the recording device, and then grits his teeth when the kid makes no move to leave.

"If I have to ask you again, I won't be held responsible for my actions," House growls at him. His hand tightens on the neck of the bottle of whiskey.

"Off the record," the guy starts, and House groans. He never should have agreed to this. Right now, he can't even remember the fit of insanity and egotism that led him to believe otherwise.

"It doesn't matter, and I'd like you to leave."

"It does matter," the guy says insistently, and House has to restrain himself from throwing the bottle at his head. That would be an unforgivable waste of good whisky.

"Not to your story."

"Why not? You both survived–"

"That's just it," House shouts. "Neither of us survived that. Forty-four people under his care died, and much more than the infection or running out of water, that convinced him he didn't deserve to live. I was just pissed. I wasn't doing him a favor or putting him out of his misery. I wanted to shoot him and watch him die."

House doesn't know if it's the long speech or the confession that leave him short of breath. He's too concerned with trying to gasp as much air in his lungs as possible. The young man comes to his side at once, but House shoves him away.

"Nobody came out of this alive," House says between gasps, and he thinks of the nightmares he still has; three ghouls ripping the intestines out of a sixteen year old girl, shooting a serial rapist in the guts and leaving him in a field, Wilson's mouth pouring blood. "How is a friendship supposed to survive that?"

The damn kid reporter keeps trying to help him, and House eventually allows himself to be moved over to the couch. The guy asks a bunch of questions, like if there's anyone he should call. He drops a hint the size of Alaska that Wilson wants to get back in touch, but House blithely ignores him. He knows Wilson wants to hear from him, just like he knows that Wilson is probably too thick to understand why House doesn't want to see him.

House visited Wilson once, while he was still in the makeshift tent hospital they'd set up on campus. It had felt so strange, walking outside when it wasn't winter.

Wilson had been asleep, or maybe he'd still been unconscious at that point. Memories of the time immediately after Princeton's liberation are still dim and sketchy. He'd looked in on Wilson; he saw the tubes, the stitches, the bandages the bulked up Wilson's emaciated chest.

He had looked fragile. Vulnerable. House had fled, feeling a familiar darkness rush down on him again.

"The decision to kill… it's not easy to make. And it's even harder to undo," he tells the kid reporter. "I can't look at him without remembering it."

The reporter finally looks satisfied at that, and eventually he leaves. House grabs the whisky from the coffee table, and drinks straight from the bottle because his glass is out of reach. He keeps swallowing until he can close his eyes and see only darkness; no ghosts, no ghouls, no dead friends, and no specters of his former self.

When he awakens again, it's night. All the lights are off – it's another brown-out. The electricity is still sketchy in some of the northern states. He stares into the ceiling as if there might be answers there.

He pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and dials a number he wasn't sure he knew.

The line rings twice before Wilson picks up.

"House?" His voice sounds strong, like it hasn't in years. Worried, as well.

House almost hangs up. Instead, a word pushes past the rusty lump in his throat.

"Wilson." He clears his throat. "I–" Then the words catch like metal hooks in his throat.

"I know," Wilson says. House's relief is almost overwhelming. He doesn't have to say it; even if he's not entirely clear on what "it" is, but that's besides the point. Wilson knows.

There is a long silence, the only sound is their soft breath. Then Wilson says quietly, "I miss you."

Hope begins to burn, a small candle in a dark and cavernous window, inside his chest.


End file.
